Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The Cruz Crusade

By Alan
Caruba

Back in
May, in a commentary titled “Ted Cruz for President”, I took note of the
reasons why he would be eligible to run for President in 2016, citing the
opinions of legal scholars and others. The odds have just gone up that he will
not only make a run for the office, but can win. He will have to do it, at this
point, by overcoming the opposition of the elites in the Republican Party who
have managed to lose the last two elections for that office.

I
wrote, “As Solicitor General (for Texas), Cruz authored more than 80 U.S.
Supreme Court briefs and argued before it 43 times, securing a number of
landmark national victories defending U.S. sovereignty against the U.N. and the
World Court, the Second Amendment, the constitutionality of the Texas Ten
Commandments monument, the words ‘under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and other
key decisions.”

In
the early years of the American government, what was high on the list of
priorities for the job of President was leadership. From Washington to Grant to
Eisenhower, Americans voted for men who had demonstrated that quality in
combat. They saw it in Ronald Reagan and they saw it in George W. Bush’s
response to 9/11 and stuck with him when he took us to war in Iraq.

Ted
Cruz, a freshman Senator, demonstrated that with extraordinary endurance as he
gave voice to the many reasons the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—is an attack on
the lives and the livelihood of all Americans.

He
has been attacked by the Republican establishment and even by some in the media
you might consider friendly to his crusade in order to get Americans to
understand how deleterious Obamacare is to our nation’s economy, to the free
market—free enterprise system, to the relationship we take for granted with our
personal physicians, and to the right to privacy that lies very much at the
heart of our healthcare and political system.

I
am not a legal scholar, but is obvious to me from my reading in American history
that the Founders never envisioned that the Constitution would be misconstrued
to say that the government has the right to tell us what we MUST PURCHASE and
that, of course is what Obamacare does. When you take away the fundamental
right to purchase or NOT purchase under penalty of a fine, you take away a
fundamental freedom, you take away liberty.

Ted
Cruz understands that and it is a wonder to me that everyone else does not
understand it as well. It is true that the House of Representatives, controlled
by the Republican Party, has passed a multitude of laws to repeal Obamacare. The
most recent law would defund Obamacare while funding the government.

Because
the Senate is controlled by Democrats, however, those laws die there. Indeed,
the former greatest deliberative body in the world does not deliberate much
anymore. It takes its marching offers from an offensive clique of men led by
Harry Reid (D-NV). The widespread public rejection of Obamacare has a number of
Democratic Party Senators, up for election soon, breaking with the Party to vote
with Republicans on some bills.

Ted
Cruz has given them a lesson in true leadership and in true courage.

A
new generation of Americans is being required to learn the lessons of those
first Americans who distrusted the tendency of power to become tyranny. In a
book by Timothy Sandefur that will be published in January by the Cato
Institute, “The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence
and the Right to Liberty”, he writes that “A government that enables a single
tyrant or a powerful group of influential insiders to exploit power to benefit
themselves would expose citizens to the same dangers of violence and oppression
that would exist in a country ruled only by warlords and strongmen.”

We
have been witnessing the tyrannical misuse of power by President Barack Obama
through the instrument of Executive Orders, through the revision of the
provisions of Obamacare that bypass the role of Congress, and, it can be
argued, by the party-line vote that passed—unread—a 2,700 page act that has
since ballooned to 27,000 pages of regulation, strangling and destroying one
sixth of the nation’s economy, healthcare, as it destroys jobs and business growth in other sectors.

The
reason the Tea Party movement came into being was a protest against Obamacare
before it was enacted and resistance to it since. It is the Tea Party movement,
as seen in those elected to office in the Senate and the House in 2010 that has
been leading the fight to defund and repeal Obamacare.

5 comments:

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people … must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify." --Federalist No. 33 (1787)

Even Senator Tom Coburn, a man for whom I have held a great deal of respect, says Ted Cruz is out of line with his antics on the floor of the Senate. For once, I have to disagree with Coburn.

I believe Cruz knew he was fighting a losing battle when he started his crusade. He continued forward because he believed it was important for Americans to alerted to the havoc that is headed their direction, in the form of Obamacare. For that, he has my utmost respect.

"...the Founders never envisioned that the Constitution would be misconstrued to say that the government has the right to tell us what we MUST PURCHASE..."

And this would apply to auto insurance...how?

Oh, I forgot. Travel by roads monopolized by government fiat is a "privilege", not a "right". Sorry, got to disagree, and point out that that has nothing to do with whether or not we can be commanded to buy something by government decree, no matter what the circumstances.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.